Previously on Kate’s Blog: A week-long experiment to get a taste for the challenges of NaNoWriMo before November hits. Will our hero succeed, or will she get distracted by cat .gifs on the internet? Tune in this week on Kate’s Blog for the shocking conclusion!
If you read that in movie announcer voice, good for you.
10/01
This proved to be a great day for starting. Hooray for downtime! I managed 500+ words before heading to work, then chipped away on the rest during breaks. Success! I even finished before lunch, so I was able to spend the afternoon working on edits for a separate story.
Day 1: 1726/1667 words
10/02
My second day was smooth sailing as well. I had a ton of free time in between tasks, but I think that led me to procrastinate a bit more because I knew I had wiggle room.
Day 2: 1737/1667 words
Total: 3463 words
10/3
Typically Thursdays are my busiest days, so I was afraid of slipping on my count. But given that I didn’t have a lot, I was more determined to make the best use of my time than I was with most of my other days. Between that and having a ton of fun with the scene I was writing, I actually managed to get more work done this day than any of the others during my stretch.
Day 3: 1955/1667
Total: 5418 words
10/4
I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would and I ended up being pretty worn down by work by the end of the day. It was a struggle to make the count before bed, but I squeaked by with a few words in change.
Day 4: 1727/1667
Total: 7145 words
10/5
Ah, the weekend! I wasted too much time watching the sky to see if it would rain to get in a heavy session before I headed out for the day, then wasted time again in my few hours at home before going out to a birthday dinner. I came back home and forced myself to finish the word count before I could sleep, which lost me an hour and a half or so of nice REM-cycle rest. Well, it ain’t NaNoWriMo without an (un)healthy dose of sleep deprivation, right?
Day 5: 1829/1667
Total: 8974
10/6
Library day! I went and parked myself in the public library with no other plan but to write. Since I’d been going over word count every day since the stretch began, I calculated that I wouldn’t need much more padding to make my personal goal (getting to 50k on my WIP before the end of the challenge) and I managed to hit the mark in about 2 hours. The rest of the time I spent focusing on editing another manuscript, which had been sorely neglected since my stretch began.
Day 6: 1690/1667
Total: 10664
10/7
LAST DAY WOOO! Morning writing went great, but lack of breaks and a lot of great TV to catch up on meant that I ended up staying up half an hour later than usual to hit the mark. But hit the mark I did. And you know how that feels?
Feels like it’s time for bed.
In conclusion: Experiment was a resounding success. Tough in parts, but I won’t have to run myself ragged the entire month of November. You hear that, NaNoWriMo? BRING IT.